Trump's Planned Mass Visa Revocation Puts the Safe Third Country Agreement in Question

The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the tourist and business visas of up to 200,000 foreign nationals who have applied for or are actively seeking asylum in the United States, in what would be the largest single mass visa revocation in U.S. history. The U.S. State Department has begun its review of the plan, which targets B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum in the United States. Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and DW all reported the plan in late August 2026. Associated Press

The announcement is the latest in a series of measures that have steadily narrowed the U.S. asylum system since Trump's return to office. On his inauguration day in January 2025, Trump said an "invasion" at the U.S.-Mexico border justified extreme measures. That same day, he signed an executive order titled "Protecting The American People Against Invasion" that revoked prior provisions governing the safe and orderly processing of asylum seekers at the United States border. A companion order, "Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program," directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend decisions on applications for refugee status until a finding is made. White House

Trump then indefinitely closed the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers, signed an executive order freezing refugee processing, and slashed the U.S. annual refugee cap to a historic low. In June 2025, a further executive order fully suspended the entry into the United States of nationals of Afghanistan as immigrants and nonimmigrants. White House

For Canada, the visa revocation plan has implications that reach directly into the bilateral asylum architecture. Under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, foreign nationals who have already claimed asylum in the United States are turned away at Canada's border, with limited exceptions including for those who have family in Canada. The agreement rests on the premise that both countries operate comparable refugee-protection systems and can be trusted to share responsibility for asylum claims.

Immigration experts say the Trump administration has undermined that premise by eroding the rights of asylum seekers in the U.S. Lori Wilkinson, Canada Research Chair in Migration Futures at the University of Manitoba, said the visa revocation announcement may drive affected asylum seekers to try to enter Canada and that Ottawa should begin considering how to respond. Immigration lawyer Maureen Silcoff said a mass visa revocation would undermine the Safe Third Country Agreement to such a degree that Canada should consider pausing or cancelling it altogether. The Globe and Mail

The legal foundation of the agreement was tested before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2023. The Court upheld the Safe Third Country Agreement, ruling that it could stand because it contained mechanisms for Canada to consider refugee status claims when ineligibility under the scheme would lead to deprivations of liberty. That decision, however, was decided on the features of the U.S. asylum system as they existed at the time. The successive executive orders and the prospective revocation of 200,000 visas have altered the operational landscape that the Court examined.

The broader context here is one of cumulative divergence between the two countries' asylum regimes. When the Supreme Court upheld the agreement in 2023, the U.S. system, however imperfect, retained procedural safeguards the Court found constitutionally sufficient in the Canadian context. The orders issued since January 2025 have dismantled or suspended several of those safeguards. The indefinite closure of the southern border to asylum seekers, the freeze on refugee adjudications, the reduction of the refugee cap to historic lows, and now the prospective mass revocation of visas held by people who have sought the protection of the U.S. system collectively raise the question of whether the United States can still be considered a safe third country in the sense the agreement and the Court's reasoning require.

For Canadian policymakers, the operational stakes are twofold. First, individuals whose visas are revoked and whose asylum claims remain pending in the U.S. may seek to enter Canada, either at official ports of entry or between them. Those who have already filed asylum claims in the U.S. would be ineligible to claim asylum at a Canadian port of entry under the Safe Third Country Agreement, subject to the existing family-member and other exceptions. That could redirect flow to irregular crossings, as occurred in significant numbers before the agreement was extended to the entire land border in 2023. Second, if Canada continues to treat the U.S. as a safe third country while its asylum infrastructure is being systematically curtailed, the federal government faces both a legal vulnerability and a political one: the former, if a future challenge argues the factual basis of the 2023 ruling no longer holds; the latter, if the optics of turning away vulnerable claimants at the border become untenable.

Silcoff's call to pause or cancel the agreement represents the most direct prescription from the immigration bar to date. Wilkinson's framing, that Ottawa should begin considering how to respond, is more cautious but points in the same direction: the visa revocation plan, if carried out, would place the Safe Third Country Agreement under stress it has not previously faced.